Improvement in mittens



F. L. OAKLEY. Mittens.

No. 138,273, Patented AprH29 .1873.

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Witnesses: lnvemun AM. PHOTO-LIYHOGRAPHIL ca MK (osaomsmocfsg! UNITEDSTATES PATENT OFFICE FARNAM L. OAKLEY, OF NEW YORK, N. Y.

IMPROVEMENT IN MITTENS.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 138,223, dated April29, 1873; application filed March 1, 1873.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, FARNAM L. OAKLEY, of the city, county, and State ofNewYork, have invented a new and useful Improvement in Mittens, of whichthe following is a specifica tion:

My invention relates to the manufacture of knitted mittens by machinery;and has for its object to produce flat-web mittens shaped to conform tothe shape of the hand better than the machine-made mittens now do, whichare so ill shaped and unsatisfactory that they meet but little sale anduse compared with what might be expected, if they were more satisfactoryin this respect.

The only way in which mittens have heretofore been produced in flat web,on machines has been to knit the web from the wrist to the front of thethumb wide enough for the widest part of the hand, then drop off asufficient amount for forming the thumb, continue the remainder to theend, and then after running it off run the thumb portion on again andfinish it, after which the web was folded and sewed together. The shapethus produced is very little like the true shape of the hand, being toowide at the wrist and lacking very much in width from the roots of thethumb to the ends of the fingers, this part be 7 ing greatly reduced bythe part dropped off for the thumb, and the thumb is more like thefinger of a glove than the thumb of a mitten.

Now, my invention consists in the manufacture of knitted mittens in fiatweb with the wrist and hand portion shaped exactly as demanded; andnicely formed and well-fitting thumbs, conforming as nicely to the shapeof the natural hand as these portions of the gloves which are made bycutting by patterns from skins or cloths, by widening the web on one orboth edges as much beyond the width required for the wrist and hand asneeded for the thumb so that when the web is folded and sewed up thethumb springs out from the side of the hand portion as it does in thenatural hand and in the mittens and gloves cut out by patterns.

Figures 1, 2, and 3 are diagrams of the flat web, such as Iproduce onthe machine in slightly-different patterns, but all on the same generalplan. Figs. 4, 5, and 6, represent the finished mittens produced fromthe said webs by folding and sewing them up; and Fig. 7 is a front viewof a mitten, such as heretofore ranging it so that it will contract alittle at I the wrist B. From the wrist or at the end of the lines b,which I design to have terminate at the beginning of the thumb, I widenout along the line?) 0 as far as to the front of the base of the thumbabout a dozen stitches, more or less, all on the edge on which the thumbis formed, as in Fig. 1; orI may widen for the hand portion partly onthe other edge, as from c to (1, Figs. 2 and 3, and less on the otherside, as e to f, continuing from b to e nearly in a straight line 5 thenI drop off the stitches for the thumb on the lines o g and f g, andfinish out the hand portion, and after dropping that off run on thethumb, at cgf g, and finish them out. These patterns or webs thus formedbeing folded and sewed together at the edges which meet on the dottedlines of Figs. 4, 5, 6, form the nicely-shaped mittens represented inthese figures, which in the perfectionwith which they fit and theirelegance of appearance are very superior to the comgon 7style, which iscorrectly represented in Having thus described my invention, I claim asnew and desire to secure by Letters Patent-- As a new article ofmanufacture, a mitten having the hand portion D corresponding to thewrist in width, and the thumb portion formed by widening out the webaltogether 011 one edge, or partly on one edge and partly on the other,as shown and described.

FARNAM L. OAKLEY.

Witnesses:

A. P. THAYER, ALEX. F. RoBERTs.

